The HANA Distinguished Engineer social contract

[Former Member]

We're in the process of rebooting the HANA Distinguished Engineer program, and one of the first questions was "what's expected of me, and what do I get". It's not clear enough so I thought I'd put it out there as a sort of "social contract".

This is a work in progress, so feel free to contribute.

What's expected of me, as a HANA Distinguished Engineer?

There is a qualification page HANA Distinguished Engineer Nominations which explains what's required to be a HDE. This sets the bar for incoming Distinguished Engineers. What's expected of existing HDEs isn't any different.

HDEs should continue to....

- be hands on HANA experts

- be socially active on whatever channel works for them

- help educate the wider community

- make customer projects a success

- be active in the HDE community

We're not prescriptive on how this happens. The classic example is a HDE that works in customer projects, blogging and answering questions on SCN. But, if you're active on other websites, or touring and training customers, or whatever works for you (and customers), then that's all good.

What happens if I no longer want to be a HDE, or am not doing what's expected of me?

We celebrate the moving on of an HDE and we hold an active HANA Distinguished Engineer Alumni list. If you're too heads down in customers to contribute socially, or you move onto another vendor, or you just don't want to be in the program then you can elect to move to the Alumni.

Conversely, if you don't contribute as much as when you started being a HDE, we may check with you to see if you still want to be a HDE, and transition you to the Alumni if not.

If you have a negative effect on the HDE program, for example creating very poor quality content, then we may also ask you to leave. It hasn't happened yet!

What do I get as a HDE?

This is a work in progress too, and you can expect this to be improved through 2014.

- We run a twice-monthly webinar to HDEs from various internal groups at SAP, or other HDEs. This is a means to get the inside track on what's coming next and keep ahead of the market.

- The HDE program runs events like Blog: Join the SAP HANA Distinguished Engineers... | SAP HANA at which you can get the opportunity to present. We will try to persuade someone to help with T&E if necessary.

- The HDE status is intended to be prestigious, and (whilst there's no promises!), it should help enforce your status as a HANA expert when getting a new role.

We'd love feedback from the HDEs and the community on what else can be done here.